David Oyelowo has begged for his sons' futures not to be like his father's past, as he opened up about the racism his family has endured.
David Oyelowo
The 'Selma' star spoke out to share his own experiences with racism as he admitted he fears for his sons Asher and Caleb.
He said: "In a bid to pull myself out of the hole I have been in I've tried to look to the future, the future that my children will step into, but in a bid to do that I have had to look at the past ... We are not safe, and even though I am an optimistic person I now look to my son having watched my father suffer what he suffered, some of what I have faced, there is so much more I could tell you of what I have faced ... Please let the future not be the same for my son as it has been for my dad, for me, and for so many black people over the centuries. So my friends reaching out to me saying how are you doing, I'm not doing great."
And when the 44-year-old actor heard what his father had been through when he first arrived in the UK, he vowed to make a "different" future for his family and to end systemic racism.
Speaking about what her father went through in the 60s, he added: "When he arrived in the UK people would check for his tail to see if he had one, he had coffee thrown in his face, hot coffee, he was spat at, he couldn't rent a place to live because it was, 'No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs.' He would tell me these stories and they felt like something relegated to the past, something that we had moved on from, I stepped into a future that I determined was going to be different."
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